Brian lunges again, but this one is better. He manages to take my leg out from under me and we both go down. He’s on top. I know the punch is coming before I feel it. He hits me, just under the eye and it feels like the side of my face explodes. My head jerks back and I see stars.
I also see clearly for the first fucking time in two years.
None of the crying or the booze, or the wandering of Vesper House’s halls have ever given me this clarity. This kind of insight. I can see it all now. In this world, there’s only strength. Only the person that can do what needs to be done, the person that deserves to live.
Everything else is nothing.
My life has been nothing for two years. A ghost of what it should be. A goddamned memory that’s followed me around every single day. Rotten and cloying, filling my nose with decay. If I lose tonight, I won’t even have that shell of existence. Brian slaps me, wraps his hands around my neck and squeezes.
“Fucking cunt! I’m going to kill you!”
If Brian wins, he’s going to do what his father tried. He’s going to kill me, take the bullshit life I have and rip it away from me. I’ll be a footnote in my family tree, just a girl that got her life taken over nothing…nothing…that fucking word.
Nothing.
I reach up and grab Brian’s jacket collar with both hands. I jerk him down so suddenly that he’s thrown off balance for a split second. His grip loosens just enough for me suck in a breath of air. That air fills my lungs. It gives me hope. I’ve never had air be so fucking good to me. I yank him down again and push off from the ground, bridging my hips into him so hard that I’m able to throw him fully off balance. He tips to the side and all it takes is one hip buck to get him off of me enough that I’m able to shove myself away and out from under him. I roll away from Brian and grab the first thing I can get my hands on. It’s a glass vase sitting at the base of a headstone, antique from the heavy feel of it in my hands. I barely have time to adjust my grip on it before Brian is on me, grabbing my leg and pulling me to him.
I see the flash of metal in his hand. A knife. “I’m going to kill you!”
I don’t answer. I’m not about to let this fuck face stab me. How embarrassing would that be to admit? Being the town pariah is one thing but getting cut up by Brian Sheep is not gonna fucking happen.
I’ll kill him before I go down like that.
Brian slices the knife down and I swing the vase as hard as I can at his hand. There’s the telltale ping of glass on metal before his knife goes flying. I hear it hit a headstone somewhere to the left of us.
“God fucking dammit!” Brian’s frustrated yell is the only warning I get before he tries to get back on top of me. He throws himself at me and I shift, rise up onto a knee and smash the vase into his head. The glass doesn’t shatter from the hit, but itknocks the shit out of Brian. He stumbles back, the solidthwackof the vase against his temple stuns him. He falters, rocks back a step while I get to my feet and hit him with the vase again. It connects with his nose this time. He falls back against the stone anchor behind him and bounces off it and falls to his knees.
I don’t waste a second. I cross the space between us and bring the vase down on Brian. It shatters this time. Blood stains his blond hair and the blood looks black in the moonlight. Blood pours down the side of his face and onto his neck, stains his clothes as he looks up at me.
Eyes wide and mouth open, gasping for air. He doesn’t know where he is. Even with only the moon for light, I can see the dazed look in his eyes. I bring my foot up and slam it against his jaw. His head flies back and he hits the grassy ground with a soft thud.
“Dick,” I mutter.
Brian moans, brings a hand up to his head and tries to get away from me. He moves back on his hands, tries to drag himself away from me. I pay him no mind while he whimpers like the coward he is. I turn and pick up a prayer candle a mourner left at a grave to the left of me. I test the weight of it and I know Brian understands why I’ve picked it up when I hear him cry.
“N-no,” he chokes out. “Please, Maris.”
How many women cried ‘please’ to this fucker? How many of them wept while he turned their every waking moment into terror? More than he remembers, I bet. He’s the kind of narcissistic asshole who thinks a woman’s nervous placating smile is anything but a bid for safety. Men like Brian don’t learn, they never will, they’ll go on and on ruining women’s lives just because they decided on her. Not one woman would be safe from it as long as he was alive. Every little minute would be marked the fucking minute he chose a new target. No amount of stonewalling or trying to keep the peace would ever keep awoman safe from him. Like father, like son, right? And that’s why I’m not teaching him a lesson, there’s no sense in it.
“You’ll never learn. That’s the problem with you,” I say softly, eyes on the candle. Brian flinches at the sound of my voice, I can tell from the little hitch in his breath I hear. I don’t look at him. I look at the candle. The Virgin de Guadalupe’s head is bent, eyes down as she prays. I’m glad she doesn’t have to see what I’m about to do with her likeness. I used to help my granny light her candles for her evening prayers. She wouldn’t recognize me right now. Maybe Brian is right about me.
Maybe I am evil.
I like to think granny would understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. She would. At least that’s what I tell myself while I rub my thumb over the Virgin’s clasped hands. The candle has only been lit once and not for long from the look of it. Good, that means the glass won’t break as easy with the full candle inside.
I look up from the candle andtsk.“That’s what girls tell you, isn’t it? You like women being afraid, don’t you? Where’d you learn that? Your dear old dad? Some kind of generational kink?”
Brian freezes when I bring up his dad. He stops trying to get away and sits up to face me like he’s going to do shit to me.
“You don’t talk about him.” He sounds off, speech a little slurred. I think I gave him a concussion when I hit him with the vase. Good. He deserves it. I’m going to make sure he gets so much worse.
“Whatever you say,” I tell Brian before I swing the prayer candle like a baseball bat and hit him in the jaw with it. Something flies out of his mouth and hits a headstone beside us. I think it’s a tooth. I hit him again with it and he crumples forward like a wad of used tissue. He falls onto his hands, trapping them beneath him. I go down on the ground with him and keep hitting him with the candle. I bring it up over my head and down as hard as I can again and againand again.
When I stop, I see that I was right, the candle didn’t break. It only does when I drop it on the ground and it hits the stone slab of the grave we’re on. I hear the glass crack before the candle rolls away from me and thumps when it hits the ground. Brian doesn’t move and neither do I.
The wind howls, whipping around us as I watch him for a minute more but there’s nothing to see just like I knew there wouldn’t be. He’s dead. I sit there for another minute, long enough that the world starts to come back into focus. Dead leaves rustle and blow past us and an owl hoots overhead as it flies by.
I get up and start running.
